Pooler awards contract for installation of 'smart' traffic signals

Officials in Pooler are moving ahead with plans to improve traffic conditions along one of the city’s busiest roadways.

The Pooler City Council on Monday awarded a $1.2 million contract to Pooler-based Griffin Contracting Inc. for the installation of a new adaptive traffic control system and associated connecting fiber along areas of Pooler Parkway and Airways Avenue. In addition, the contract with Griffin includes costs for the installation of a new traffic signal at the intersection of Pipemakers Circle and Pooler Parkway.

Griffin Contracting was the sole bidder for the project.

The city began planning for the new “smart” signal system at the end of last year, when Pooler council members awarded the contract for the project’s engineering to Integrated Science & Engineering at a cost of about $67,000.

A month later, the city agreed to pay $247,000 to purchase the equipment needed to install the system at six intersections along Pooler Parkway.

According to the provider of the new InSync Real-time Adaptive Traffic Control System, Kansas-based Rhythm Engineering, the smart signals wouldn’t solve all of the problems with congestion along the parkway, but they should improve overall traffic flow and safety.

“The Pooler Parkway-Airways Avenue is a very complex and challenging corridor,” representatives of Rhythm Engineering wrote in a description of the project in December. “InSync has proven to substantially reduce crashes, travel time, delay, stops, fuel consumption and emissions. However, it is critical to recognize that when dealing with saturated traffic conditions, there is no simple fix. Rather, to properly address saturated traffic conditions, it requires a roadway capacity improvement.”

George Fidler Jr., the director of engineering for the Savannah Airport Commission, said research conducted by the airport commission has determined it will be necessary in the future to expand the roadway to hold the traffic to and from the airport.

But until that costly expansion is necessary, Fidler said, officials with the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport agreed to work in conjunction with the city of Pooler to give the new smart signals a shot.

“No traffic signal in the world will add capacity,” Fidler said after the meeting Monday. “This will hold us over, but no traffic signal adds capacity. At some point, the traffic will back up.”

Byrd has said the city is funding the installation of the six signals on its side of the parkway and the airport agreed to the do the same with five signals on its end. The two entities are planning the system’s installation together, Byrd said, to ensure they come online at about the same time.

The city manager said the contract approved Monday sets a time frame for completion at 180 days, or about six months, although the work could be complete sooner.

If the system proves successful, Byrd has said in the past the plan is to next purchase and install the adaptive system on another heavily traveled city thoroughfare, U.S. 80.

In other business Monday, the Pooler City Council:

• Voted to subdivide a 12-acre city owned tract of land on Isaac G. Laroche Drive, just off Pooler Parkway. The vote creates a 7.5-acre parcel, which houses an existing city fire station, and a 4.92-acre parcel to house a future crime laboratory for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

• Approved a resolution to borrow nearly $6.2 million from the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority’s clean water state revolving fund to assist with the upgrade of the city’s wastewater treatment plant.

• Awarded a contract to Bloomingdale-based Crossroads Construction for the demolition of three buildings on 209 Salter St., stripping of the lot and re-grassing at a cost of $11,600. Byrd said the property was quit-claimed to the city by Chatham County, which took possession of the property after it was “involved in illegal activities.”